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Energy, exergy, and enviroeconomic assessment of double and single pass solar air heaters having a new design absorber

Research Authors
Saleh Abo-Elfadl, Mohamed S. Yousef , Hamdy Hassan
Research Date
Research Year
2020
Research Journal
Process Safety and Environmental Protection
Research Publisher
Elsevier
Research Vol
149
Research_Pages
451–464
Research Abstract

This paper experimentally examines the performance of solar air heater (SAH) having a newly designed tubular absorber  comprising adjacent parallel tubes called tubular SAH (T SAH) via energy, exergy, and enviroeconomic  standpoints. A comparative performance assessment between T SAH and flat plate solar air heater  (F SAH) at diverse air mass flow rates (MFRs) of 0.075, 0.05, and 0.025 kg/s is performed. Experiments
 for both heaters are tested using two flow pass arrangements of single-pass (SP) and double pass (DP). The  results reveal that maximum enhancement in thermal and exergy efficiencies of 133 % and 330  %, respectively is obtained when using SP T SAH against SP F SAH at air MFR of 0.025 kg/s. It is found that when  there is  an increase in air MFR, there is a significant increment in thermal efficiency, whereas there  is a reduction in exergy efficiency. Despite the performance in the case of T SAH is more effective
than F SAH, the enhancement in the case of DP F SAH due to using DP flow configuration is greater than that  of DP T SAH. Finally, the results indicate that the carbon credit earned regarding the amount CO2 mitigated  for SP F SAH and SP T SAH at MFR of 0.075 kg/s is estimated at 391.6 $/year and 561.9 $/year, respectively.